"They call me Ishmael."
Perhaps I shouldn't write a novel just yet. The wifey-poo and I were just watching some t.v. together after putting the kiddies to bed. Spartacus:Blood and Sand and a 2003 Documentary about Burning Man that starts 250 some odd days before the event. It's enough to give you a panic attack!!
I mean, REALLY!! They profile all of the amazing people who are working on their Burning Man projects all year round. Spreading pieces of their souls across the desert sand like water droplets on starved earth. WE haven't even purchased our damn tickets yet! Gotta do that ASAP, then we can worry about all of the creative stuff.
We are going to have to go hunting though the fields of flea markets and farmer's market's stalls to find the hollow empty things. She is planning on filling them with something. I can't wait to see what she creates! We have been wallowing in a grave cultural,nuclear-family stagnation for a few years now. Not that it hasn't served it's purpose. It has. We are who we are because of all that.
Wow. I hope I'm not a blogger who spouts self-absorbed platitudes about the proper expression of my soul in a socially biased world. Wow.
That's a catch-22!
That belongs on a T-shirt or something Spray-painted of course. Or just a mantra. Hmmmmmm.
I think we need something like Green Machines or something that is compact and small and that we can decorate with lights to get around with rather than worry about bikes. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so on and so forth. Hmmmmmmm.
Scary to read how a person's mind plays out. Especially in this blogger world. I can type fast enough that the thoughts can literally just appear on the page without me thinking about it. Therefore, YOUR reading my thought aren't you?! Stop it! I need to find my aluminum foil cap....be right back.....
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Thursday, April 8, 2010
152 and A Wake Up.....
So we have confirmed our house sitter and we have a confirmation on the funds for the Man. Now to work towards the event. Not in a literal walking sense, but in a metaphorical movement of emotion and action. ; )
Seriously. We have started walking a couple of miles a day to prep. My Brandy has come up with a contribution of her own that will be AWESOME and I'm not going to tell you because that would give the surprise away! I practiced some spinning like back in the day in college, when I was the only one I knew who did it. Brandy said it would be funny if I actually invented spinning with glow sticks. I called it visual poetry back then. I want to get good enough before we go that I can actually do fire to music & enjoy it. Need to practice my guitar more also.
So a step ahead. Not every entry will be the well spring of wisdom and insight you have already come to expect, but a step forward none-the-less! I actually have quite a bit more I would like to talk about, but it is late & tomorrow is Friday, so I can stay up as late as I want & write a frigging novel if I want. Till then,....Laters!
Seriously. We have started walking a couple of miles a day to prep. My Brandy has come up with a contribution of her own that will be AWESOME and I'm not going to tell you because that would give the surprise away! I practiced some spinning like back in the day in college, when I was the only one I knew who did it. Brandy said it would be funny if I actually invented spinning with glow sticks. I called it visual poetry back then. I want to get good enough before we go that I can actually do fire to music & enjoy it. Need to practice my guitar more also.
So a step ahead. Not every entry will be the well spring of wisdom and insight you have already come to expect, but a step forward none-the-less! I actually have quite a bit more I would like to talk about, but it is late & tomorrow is Friday, so I can stay up as late as I want & write a frigging novel if I want. Till then,....Laters!
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
153 and a Wake Up
Just to let you know, I have been sick all day. Dry heaves since morning and no where to go. What do you do when you are the only one who can do your job, and no one can do it if you leave, and if you leave you will return to a nightmare the next day?
Ahhh! Isn't this the very reason for Burning Man?! We have to disconnect somehow,someway, for sometime. There is something wrong with a culture that bothers you physically like that. I could have left. Life is about choices right? I could have chosen to go home, lay down, and rest.
However, life is about consequences as well. Since no one could have done my job, I couldn't have rested, because the phone would not have stopped ringing, and when tomorrow came, if I felt better, everyone would have looked slant-eyed at me.
You know the look. The one everyone gives you when they don't REALLY believe your ill? You know I'm right! Unless your laid up in a hospital racking up a nice super-sized bill, no one ever TRULY buys that you are ill and can't work. They all ask, "Are you feeling better?", when what they really mean is, "I wanna hear the lame excuse you have for not being here."
So there I am all day, toughing it out like a TRUE lumberjack. Dry heaving and all. To take care of our drivers and my co-workers. Whether they hate me or not. Silly really. But then again, no one will really understand that till they wake up. Problem with THAT is the wake up I'm talking about is dying. Not many rushing to that door to see what's behind the curtain. Is it a new car? Is it an empty box? Or is it????
Anyway. Time to move on. I gotta get some rest. I feel sucky!!!
Ahhh! Isn't this the very reason for Burning Man?! We have to disconnect somehow,someway, for sometime. There is something wrong with a culture that bothers you physically like that. I could have left. Life is about choices right? I could have chosen to go home, lay down, and rest.
However, life is about consequences as well. Since no one could have done my job, I couldn't have rested, because the phone would not have stopped ringing, and when tomorrow came, if I felt better, everyone would have looked slant-eyed at me.
You know the look. The one everyone gives you when they don't REALLY believe your ill? You know I'm right! Unless your laid up in a hospital racking up a nice super-sized bill, no one ever TRULY buys that you are ill and can't work. They all ask, "Are you feeling better?", when what they really mean is, "I wanna hear the lame excuse you have for not being here."
So there I am all day, toughing it out like a TRUE lumberjack. Dry heaving and all. To take care of our drivers and my co-workers. Whether they hate me or not. Silly really. But then again, no one will really understand that till they wake up. Problem with THAT is the wake up I'm talking about is dying. Not many rushing to that door to see what's behind the curtain. Is it a new car? Is it an empty box? Or is it????
Anyway. Time to move on. I gotta get some rest. I feel sucky!!!
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Officially 154 and a wake up.....
I'm up late. The thoughts in my mind floating on the sea foam of possibility. We certainly don't have the funds to express ourselves in the way way that we optimally could, but we will have to satisfy ourselves with the best we have to lay upon the altar of faith.
Brandy and I had a discussion about whether this is an US project or a ME project. I hope desperately that it is an US project and and not an I project. All I can think about when I make that statement is,"Don't' be a ME, ME recruit" as my drill instructors use to say. In Marine speak,that means you are outside of the norm and do not conform to the team or community. What IS community? What is self-discovery and is it something that excludes your mate or is is it something that increases your understanding of each other?
You know. I have had some really good friends that have faded into the distance. I have never been able to put my finger on it, but I feel like if I could get them reading this and perhaps to the event itself, then some healing on a grand scale would occur. Surely that's optimistic on my part, but what can it hurt? For those of you I have wounded, I am truly sorry. I crave the opportunity to connect on levels I have felt, but never completed. Till the next need....Laters!
Brandy and I had a discussion about whether this is an US project or a ME project. I hope desperately that it is an US project and and not an I project. All I can think about when I make that statement is,"Don't' be a ME, ME recruit" as my drill instructors use to say. In Marine speak,that means you are outside of the norm and do not conform to the team or community. What IS community? What is self-discovery and is it something that excludes your mate or is is it something that increases your understanding of each other?
You know. I have had some really good friends that have faded into the distance. I have never been able to put my finger on it, but I feel like if I could get them reading this and perhaps to the event itself, then some healing on a grand scale would occur. Surely that's optimistic on my part, but what can it hurt? For those of you I have wounded, I am truly sorry. I crave the opportunity to connect on levels I have felt, but never completed. Till the next need....Laters!
Monday, April 5, 2010
155 And a Wake Up..
When I got to boot camp back in August of 1991, the 1st thing you learned was that you have 89 days and a wake up before you were a U.S. Marine and free to be "the Few, The Proud, The Marines!". Hell. We all bought into the knighthood or we wouldn't have been there in the 1st place.
My point in telling you this is that from that moment on, time devolved into that backwards count of 75 and a wake up, 52 and a wake up, 21 and a wake up, then finally, you Wake Up!
You put on your polished leather shoes, your bright white gloves and cover, and all of the golden eagle, globe, and anchors and present your new form to the rest of the world. Those who really mean anything are there to experience your transformation from what you were to what you have become. That is what this is. Dramatic sounding ain't it? Problem is, my life have a been shaped and formed by catharsis:
1.the purging of the emotions or relieving of emotional tensions, esp. through certain kinds of art, as tragedy or music.
2.Medicine/Medical.
3.Psychiatry.
a.psychotherapy that encourages or permits the discharge of pent-up, socially unacceptable affects.
b.discharge of pent-up emotions so as to result in the alleviation of symptoms or the permanent relief of the condition.
(thanks to dictionary.com)
This is and isn't what I want to have happen at this event. I want release, that is for sure. I want to open up to possibilities, but I don't want to break myself down as I have in the past. That tends to be more destructive that productive. It's literally walking the razors edge when you come to it.
I mean, let's address our fears for a MOMENT. I'm not very young anymore and neither is my wife. We both wheeze a bit at too much exertion. We have both put on a few more pounds since we have met. There will be a LOT of YOUNG BUCKS AND DOES prancing around the desert with their ever present promise of the future, and youth fullness, and strength.
I'm friggin' 37 and my wife isn't too much younger! We have to define ourselves and search within souls to see what's really beneath the facade and work-a-day ritual that younger people have not yet bound themselves to heart and soul. I struggle with it every day. Putting on the mask to keep the reality everyone accepts real. To play the game of life till we are called back to accounts for how we played it. Were we nice to the other kids in this life? Did we seize opportunity or let the bad decisions weigh us down into a tar pit of self-doubt and pity? Creating what my wife believes is our own living hell. She literally believes that we are already IN hell and that it's our job to work our way out. How's that for deep!?
Anyhoo, I don't want to leave any loose ends on the mother topic I left off before Easter Holiday. A metropolis is a/the "mother city" or cities that define a culture , or an ideal (as was in Plato's case), or the birth of a new culture in a new area through the use of colonies in the ancient world. What does this mean to you? How can you express and define the mother cities of your culture? How can you express the themes that dominate your experiences with "metropolis"? Many questions to stew on. Speaking of stew, mine is on (in my head)....time to forge on into the next day.....laters and 155 and a wake up!! See you there!! Better yet, see me there!!!
My point in telling you this is that from that moment on, time devolved into that backwards count of 75 and a wake up, 52 and a wake up, 21 and a wake up, then finally, you Wake Up!
You put on your polished leather shoes, your bright white gloves and cover, and all of the golden eagle, globe, and anchors and present your new form to the rest of the world. Those who really mean anything are there to experience your transformation from what you were to what you have become. That is what this is. Dramatic sounding ain't it? Problem is, my life have a been shaped and formed by catharsis:
1.the purging of the emotions or relieving of emotional tensions, esp. through certain kinds of art, as tragedy or music.
2.Medicine/Medical.
3.Psychiatry.
a.psychotherapy that encourages or permits the discharge of pent-up, socially unacceptable affects.
b.discharge of pent-up emotions so as to result in the alleviation of symptoms or the permanent relief of the condition.
(thanks to dictionary.com)
This is and isn't what I want to have happen at this event. I want release, that is for sure. I want to open up to possibilities, but I don't want to break myself down as I have in the past. That tends to be more destructive that productive. It's literally walking the razors edge when you come to it.
I mean, let's address our fears for a MOMENT. I'm not very young anymore and neither is my wife. We both wheeze a bit at too much exertion. We have both put on a few more pounds since we have met. There will be a LOT of YOUNG BUCKS AND DOES prancing around the desert with their ever present promise of the future, and youth fullness, and strength.
I'm friggin' 37 and my wife isn't too much younger! We have to define ourselves and search within souls to see what's really beneath the facade and work-a-day ritual that younger people have not yet bound themselves to heart and soul. I struggle with it every day. Putting on the mask to keep the reality everyone accepts real. To play the game of life till we are called back to accounts for how we played it. Were we nice to the other kids in this life? Did we seize opportunity or let the bad decisions weigh us down into a tar pit of self-doubt and pity? Creating what my wife believes is our own living hell. She literally believes that we are already IN hell and that it's our job to work our way out. How's that for deep!?
Anyhoo, I don't want to leave any loose ends on the mother topic I left off before Easter Holiday. A metropolis is a/the "mother city" or cities that define a culture , or an ideal (as was in Plato's case), or the birth of a new culture in a new area through the use of colonies in the ancient world. What does this mean to you? How can you express and define the mother cities of your culture? How can you express the themes that dominate your experiences with "metropolis"? Many questions to stew on. Speaking of stew, mine is on (in my head)....time to forge on into the next day.....laters and 155 and a wake up!! See you there!! Better yet, see me there!!!
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